Seeing Red
by Larunya
Summary: There was a fiend on the loose aboard the Going Merry. A manicured, kleptomaniac fiend with a penchant for chemicals and cherries. Who is responsible? And what's it got to do with Luffy?


**Seeing Red**

There was a fiend on the loose aboard the Going Merry. A manicured, kleptomaniac fiend with a penchant for chemicals and cherries. It should not have come as a surprise to a crew that had once defied both gravity and heaven but then things were never quite so predictable on the ovine vessel. After a fortnight of having nothing to do and nothing to see, the odds were in favour of a little weirdness. Inevitably, that weirdness always seemed to tail Luffy, but it was Zoro who first noticed that something was amiss.

A crimson dawn rose over the silent sea and embraced the ship with its rays, causing the swordsman to blink rapidly and contort his face into a scowl. He was not in a good mood. Sometimes he just woke up grumpy, something which a few hours of napping would placate. However today his temper was incurably vile. Days and days of inactivity and listening to Luffy's whines of boredom were taking their toll on what little patience he had. He was sick and tired of being corralled on to this ark without even so much as a glimpse of a rock, fed up of those simple-minded _females _and especially the bastard who fawned over them so much. That was partly what had set off yesterday's fight-that poncing princess of a cook dripping all over the archaeologist rather than getting on with the cooking that he was hired for. He had been crying out for a good smack in the middle of that dartboard eyebrow! Unfortunately the only one who had received a good smack in the head had been him. _Damn_ that woman. It still hurt this morning. It had to be a repetitive strain injury, the number of times she'd hit him…

Rubbing the slight swelling on his temple and cursing Nami's existence with all manner of unpalatable names, Zoro stepped out on to the deck, katana in hand to start the day's training, when he stopped. He could hear weightless footsteps coming from the direction of the bow. Zoro's eyebrows ploughed down into even more of a sour scowl. Dawn was Zoro time. If that was Usopp scuttling around, trying to pretend that he still wasn't having that recurring nightmare about the overall-exploring skyfish, somebody was heading for an irreparably squashed nose…

But the culprit wasn't Usopp. The disturber of Zoro's peace was gangly, straw-hatted and standing with a brown crumpled piece of paper at the ends of his aloft arms, holding it up towards the new-born light. Zoro couldn't see what Luffy was looking at, but Luffy was regarding it with a look of extreme concentration, his head cocked to one side.

"Nnnnn…" said Luffy, "Not like that…"

Then he sauntered off past Zoro as if the green-haired swordsman was merely another plank in the deck, looking more gormless than usual.

Zoro raised an irritable eyebrow but he was in no mood to care or question Luffy's inexplicable weirdness. In any case, all his doubts about Luffy were suddenly side-tracked when he caught sight of something in the crow's nest. In fact, it was the very last thing he wanted to see at dawn in the crow's nest and it was smirking from ear to ear as if it hugged some kind of private joke to itself. Damn that _woman._

The peculiar scene that Zoro had witnessed was only the beginning of it all. The first part of the day was relatively uneventful save for a blisteringly hot sunshine that brought the Straw Hat Pirates out on to the deck in a lazy sprawl. Usopp looked up over the canvas that he had been carefully running a paintbrush over. Zoro was predictably in the land of the sleepers, Nami's bikini-clad figure was tucked behind a handful of papers whilst Chopper had decided to surround himself with various substances for his Rumble Balls. Sanji merely lay on the deck, face flushed and periodically emitting sighs of, "Mellorine!", seemingly floored by the divine sight of Nami in little more than a sarong. Usopp had to step over him carefully in order to peer at what Nami was reading.

"New wanted posters?" he inquired, "How long have we had those?"

"Since yesterday," replied Nami without looking up, "I meant to look through them yesterday but they got misplaced for some reason. You didn't move them did you?"

"No, no, of course not!" said Usopp diplomatically, not liking her slightly threatening tone of voice, "Captain Usopp-sama has no need to care about bounties, since he knows full well that he already carries a large one."

After a small pause he said hopefully: "So, anyone we know there?"

"Nope. A lot of them are old ones anyway since the navy can't be bothered to reprint them."

Usopp sighed and stepped back over Sanji again, trying not to get too perturbed by Sanji's eyes. They'd been stuck on "heart-shaped mode" for nearly a whole hour now. He resumed his position behind the canvas, his tongue stuck out at a right angle as he gently flicked his brush to portray the delicate nuances of adoration in the crew of the great Captain Usopp. He envisaged his picture so clearly, the pirates, prostrating before him, declaring how strong and how brave he was…

"Ooh omoshiree!"#(a) chirped a little voice from over his shoulder and Usopp leapt a foot in the air, dropping the paintbrush neatly down his overall.

"Luffy!" he exclaimed, trying to fish the brush out, "How long have you been there?"

But his shock rapidly dissipated when he saw that Luffy was looking at his watercolours with an expression of genuine interest.

"Usopp, show me how you use these."

"Aah?" gaped the gunner.

"Show me how you paint," requested Luffy.

The whole crew stared at Luffy in disbelief.

"Well ok," said Usopp, taken aback, "It's really simple, all you do is mix up the paint with a dab of water and then…"

"How do you paint people?"

"Well there's no specific way of doing it Luffy, you have to…"

"How do you paint hair?"

"This may take a while," sighed Usopp and set himself to work in instructing Luffy in fine art, something that doesn't come naturally to someone with rubber fingers.

"Speaking of painting," said Nami, rising to a standing position which forced Sanji to get up too, "I think I might go and paint my nails. They'll dry really quickly in this weather."

"Nami-swaaan!" cooed Sanji, "Allow me to get it for you, especially if it will enhance your already beautiful visage."

"No, it's err, quite alright Sanji-kun, " said Nami, who really should have been more than used to Sanji's romantic overtures, "I'll get it myself."

"Then is there anything else I can do for you, Nami-san?"

Nami smiled. She may not have quite understood Sanji's emphatic gestures but she certainly wasn't against them.

"Well actually, I wouldn't mind a teeny little bowl of cherries right now…"

"Coming right up my love!" replied the love-struck chef and dashed off inside, casually followed by Nami. However, her return to the deck was not quite so quiet.

"Robin-san!" roared the navigator, visibly shaking the gunwale and sending Chopper diving for cover, "Where the hell are you?"

"She's up in the crow's nest, still on watch duty," answered Usopp on her behalf, wincing at the pitch of Nami's voice, "But why are you…"

"ROBIN-SAN!"

Robin peered down over the top of the crow's nest, calmly nonplussed at Nami's anger.

"Why Navigator-san, whatever is the matter?" she called down.

"You know what the matter is!" fumed Nami at a timbre that the seagulls above could probably hear let alone Robin, "When you first joined this ship I told you never to go through my things!"

"Things? I haven't touched anything," replied the crow's nest confidently.

"Well then, who else would want to steal my nail varnish?"

"Nail varnish?" questioned Usopp nervously.

"Yes, nail varnish," spat Nami, "Burgundy-coloured, top quality nail polish. It cost San…I mean, me, a fortune!"

"Oh Navigator-san!" laughed Robin, provoking Nami's ire even more, "I couldn't possibly want to steal your nail polish- too many hands to paint. Look!"

A small procession of extra hands simultaneously waved at Nami.

"Hmmph. Well then where is it?"

In an instant, the matter of the missing polish was sidelined as Chopper emitted a tiny wail of distress. They looked around to see that he had rejoined his Rumble Ball ingredients and was frantically scouring them for something.

"It's gone!" he cried, "The thing I need most is gone!"

"What's gone?" asked Usopp.

"The ingredient, my cinnabar!" wailed Chopper, "It's a crucial agent in the Rumble Ball!"

"What does it look like?" asked Nami.

"It's a kind of red powder. It was here just a minute ago!"

"Hmm," said Usopp, adopting a grave expression, "I think we have a thief on board."

"Damn right we do," snarled Sanji as he emerged from the galley, "And it's called Luffy. Luffy why the hell did you have to eat Nami-san's cherries?" he growled, reaching behind Usopp's canvas in order to throttle the new budding artist. But his hands only came into contact with air. Luffy was nowhere to be seen.

"Aaaah!" squealed Chopper, "The thief's kidnapped Luffy!"

"And my scarlet paint!" exclaimed an anguished Usopp, indicating an empty square in the watercolour box.

Nami stopped to think all this new information through.

"If Luffy's the obvious cherry thief then who would want to steal nail varnish, Rumble Ball powder and paint all in one go?"

"You've already said it, Navigator-san," said Robin cheerfully. She had ambled down from the crow's nest.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Luffy stole everything."

"How do you know that?" asked Chopper.

"Oh, one sees a lot when on watch duty. The crow's nest is excellent for anthropological observation."

"But why would Luffy steal? He never seems to want _anything_ except One Piece and food," said Nami sceptically.

"Oh there _is_ something he wants," replied Robin.

"What?" asked the crew collectively.

But Robin merely beamed and gestured for them all to follow her to the men's quarters. When they got down there, a very strange sight greeted them.

On first impressions, it looked like Sanji and Zoro had had a brutal and rather fragrant fight. There were splatters of red all over the floor, some on the walls, some tangled up in the fluffy pile of the rug, little pathways of what looked like blood. But then there was a slightly sweet yet metallic aroma and some of the splatters had an odd iridescent shine to them. Here and there were small hillocks of powder. In the middle of it all, sitting cross-legged, was Luffy, plastered with whatever the red mixture was. His face looked as if it was prepared to go into battle all by itself and he didn't seem to have noticed the appearance of his crew. He was preoccupied with gazing down at a small piece of paper.

"Luffy what the hell are you doing?" asked Nami crossly.

Luffy looked up and beamed as if being caught covered in sweet-smelling red muck was a normal occurrence.

"Minna, I've got it!" he proclaimed happily.

"Got what?" asked Sanji.

"His hair colour!"

Seeing the collective reaction of complete and utter confusion, (bar Robin of course) Luffy pointed at a thick mound of red paint before him before he held up the sheet of paper for them all to see. It was an old monochrome wanted poster. A wanted poster for a man who everybody knew would have had red hair had the poster been in colour…

"Shanks's wanted poster?" said Nami. Then she decked Luffy. Her polish had oozed out of the bottle and all over the rug.

"You wrecked my nail varnish for that!" she yelled and Luffy received a full-on rant about not taking Nami's belongings _ever _again.

"I only wanted to make Shanks's poster more real!" protested Luffy, "I wanted to get his hair colour right!" Usopp gestured for Nami to ease off Luffy.

"That's why you wanted to know about painting wasn't it?" he asked.

"Yep."

"And that's why you stole Nami-san's red cherries," added Sanji with an irritable undertone.

"Nah, I was just hungry."

Sanji considered adding another blow to Luffy's already throbbing head but then when he saw the expression on Luffy's face, he stopped. Luffy was staring at the poster again, staring at a face that for the last ten years had been confined to memory and dream. A smile, one that the crew had never seen before, had found its way on to their captain's face. This poster was the closest thing that he had to having his hero, the man who had saved his life, in the room with him. They all knew how it felt to have someone leave them. Even Nami couldn't remain that angry with him.

"I know what we can do," said Usopp, taking the sheet of paper from Luffy.

When Zoro got up to train again on the following dawn, he found that the sunlight was just as gratingly bright as the preceding dawn. Frowning once again, he instinctively looked up at the crow's nest. She was there again, still smiling in that annoyingly self-satisfied way but she wasn't smiling at him.

"Look," she said quietly, indicating the bow.

At the front of the ship, slumped over various sketches and a tray of watercolours, was Usopp, sound asleep thanks to the labour of a night of intricate painting. But the figure that struck Zoro most was that of Luffy. He was sat on the figurehead, once again holding that bit of paper up to the light. However this time he was grinning to the point of laughing. This time, his picture was in full colour, illuminated by the light that had first set him on his quest for the perfect red.

And somewhere far-flung across the ocean, little did Luffy know that his hero was also keeping such a picture close to him.

Note #(a): "Omoshiree" is a subversion of "omoshiroi" which usually means "interesting". Luffy uses this one all the time in the anime and I can't really find an appropriate English term to convey it-"interesting" or "cool" doesn't really get the tone across for me. I thought I should list it just in case it raised any eyebrows.

**Well, that's the first story I've completed for a long time! I hope I haven't inflicted something too terrible upon the fanfiction world…Seriously, I look forward to reading some constructive criticism for this. I don't want people to be too nice to me, I like to think I'm mature enough to take due criticism! (And maybe even some flames). If anyone likes this story enough I may continue it and quite possibly engineer a meeting between Luffy and Shanks…but let's see how it goes!**


End file.
